Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [16]
Yet, with the exception of required vaccinations, we children were seldom taken to see doctors or dentists. By seldom, what I mean is “maybe once in our lives, and only then if there was a better than even chance that we might die.” I was eighteen years old before I ever set foot in a dentist’s office. I sometimes wondered how much blood I’d actually have to lose before my parents finally broke down and brought me to a clinic. They had no religious reasons for avoiding medical care, they simply believed that seeking medical attention would not only be a waste of time, but more costly than they could afford. Add in the requirement to be tough, and the only doctors my brother and I saw were on television. I remember, for instance, that after I was struck by the rock, blood literally gushed over my face. I couldn’t see well, and was barely able to stagger home.
“You’ll be fine tomorrow,” my mother said after taking a look at it. “You’ve got a thick skull.”
Luckily, I did indeed have a thick skull and was able to heal on my own.
It was around that time, however, that my sister developed epiglottitis, a potentially fatal inflammation of the epiglottis. Neither Micah nor I knew exactly what was wrong with my sister that morning; all we knew was that my sister was burning up with fever, pale, delirious, and had vomited through the night. My parents, who knew a real emergency when they saw one, rushed her to the hospital. Unfortunately, without health insurance, the hospital required a deposit of $200, and after dropping the family off, my dad sped off in search of someone to lend him the money.
My mom went into the hospital with my sister; she told my brother and me to wait near a tree at the edge of a parking lot. “Don’t go beyond here, there, and there,” she pointed, outlining an imaginary box about twelve feet square. Even at that age, we recognized the fear in her voice, and knew enough to do exactly as she said.
It was hot that day, probably close to a hundred degrees. We’d been left with neither food nor water, and to keep our minds off the heat, we spent the next few hours climbing the tree or walking just inside the lines of the imaginary box. We made a game of getting as close to the imaginary lines as we could without stepping over. At one point, I stumbled and fell over the line. I remember standing quickly, but the thought that I’d disobeyed my mom, coupled with the stress that we were under, brought me to tears. As always, in situations like these, my brother was there to comfort me, and with his arm around me, we sat for what seemed interminable hours in the shade.
“Do you think Dana will die?” I asked eventually.
“No,” he said.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know she won’t die?”
“Because she won’t. I just know it.”
I glanced at him. “Mom looked scared. Dad, too.”
He nodded.
“I don’t want her to die,” I said.
It was the first time I’d ever contemplated such a thing, and it scared me. We didn’t have much as a family, but we’d always had one another. Even though she was younger and didn’t explore like my brother and me, my sister had already taken on the best aspects of my mother’s personality. She had a perennially sunny disposition; she laughed and smiled, and—on those days when I wasn’t tagging along with my brother—was my best friend. Like me, she loved the Johnny West set, and at night we would play together for hours.
My brother and I were a curious and sad sight in the parking lot. Strangers would see us as they got out of the car on their way to visit someone inside; hours later, when they came back out, we’d still be sitting in the same spot. A few people offered to buy us a soda or something to eat, but we’d shake our heads and say that we were fine. We’d been taught never to